Acknowledgements

My thanks are due to Mr and Mrs Walker, my aunt and uncle, who live in Cowley, and their friend and local historian, Mr Hope, of Cowley. Also, I owe a debt of gratitude to Durham Records Office and Bishop Auckland Town Hall Library.

Also by Maggie Hope

A Wartime Nurse

A Mother’s Gift

A Nurse’s Duty

A Daughter’s Gift

Molly’s War

The Servant Girl

A Daughter’s Duty

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Orphan Girl

Eliza’s Child

Workhouse Child

The Miner’s Girl

An Orphan’s Secret

About the Author

Maggie Hope was born and raised in County Durham. She worked as a nurse for many years, before giving up her career to raise her family.

About the Book

A wealthy landlord’s son, and a coal miner’s daughter…

Growing up in poverty, one of six siblings, Hannah Armstrong never thought she’d know anything other than her little mining town. But then she falls for Timothy Durkin, a wealthy Oxford student…

Following her heart, Hannah sacrifices everything she holds dear and follows her new husband to Oxford. But will her new life of luxury be everything she expected – or will she find that once a coal miner’s daughter, always a coal miner’s daughter…?

Author’s Note

The May 1926 General Strike in support of the miners lasted for ten days. The miners struggled on alone for seven months, but by November they had to admit defeat. The long months of stoppage availed them nothing; rather, it brought a great deal of distress and suffering, often the mothers and children suffering most. The Poor Relief and soup kitchens organised by the Miners’ Federation and other philanthropic bodies prevented outright starvation in the pit villages and there were few instances of physical violence by the men. Labour Party members and other miners’ leaders were often branded as communists and some imprisoned.

In the end, Durham County branch of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, along with most other districts, recommended a return to work though a majority of the men wanted to struggle on. Some of these men, especially those who were considered to have been leaders, were not to obtain work again until the advent of the Second World War.

The miners who returned had to accept conditions that were worse than those they had had to endure before the lockout.

Make sure you’ve read all Maggie Hope’s books

A Wartime Nurse

As bombs begin to fall, her strength will be tested

Newly qualified as a nurse, Theda Wearmouth is delighted to gain a place at Newcastle Hospital. But the onset of war brings tragedy when her young soldier boyfriend is killed in action before he can make good on his promise to marry her.

Broken-hearted, Theda finds herself re-assigned to a special unit of the hospital dealing with German prisoners of war. Her duty is clear. But will she be able to cope with nursing the very men her fiancé died fighting?

Click here to find out more

A Mother’s Gift

What will Katie do to keep her child?

When Katie’s grandfather and her childhood sweetheart are both killed in a mining accident, she is devastated by grief.

Matthew Hamilton, the unscrupulous owner of the mine, takes advantage of her distress in the most despicable manner. Thrown out by her grandmother, her reputation and nursing career in tatters, Katie finds herself facing a home for unmarried mothers. Only Hamilton offers her a way to keep her baby, but only if she forgoes her principles and becomes his mistress …

Click here to find out more

A Nurse’s Duty

Torn between love and duty

Following a disastrous marriage to a miner, Karen has devoted herself to a nursing career. Rising to the challenge of caring for the wounded soldiers returning home from the Great War, she has resigned herself to putting her vocation before any hope of a romantic life.

However, she finds herself drawn to handsome, trouble Patrick Murphy. But Patrick is also a Catholic priest. Dare Karen risk scandal and her position by falling for the one man she cannot have?

Click here to find out more

A Daughter’s Gift

A family torn apart. A daughter’s courage …

When Elizabeth and her four siblings are orphaned, she and her brother are sent to a children’s home; their younger sisters into foster care.

Life in the home is hard, but she is determined to look after her brother and make a better life for them both. Working as a nurse gives her a purpose but she risks everything by falling for wounded officer Jack Benson. Far above her in wealth and station, Elizabeth cannot marry him and she risks losing her nursing place if there is any hint of impropriety about her conduct.

Then Elizabeth learns that her sister, Jenny, has been adopted by an abusive farmer. Torn between her hopeless love for Jack and her sister, must Elizabeth make an extreme sacrifice to reunite her family?

Click here to find out more

Molly’s War

War, tragedy and a shameful secret …

When Molly Mason’s father dies in a pit accident, she is left penniless and alone.

She finds work in a local factory, and cheap lodgings. However, when Molly rejects her new landlord’s advances, his revenge is swift: she finds herself accused of theft and thrown in prison.

As the prospect of war grows ever close, Molly finds herself fighting a more personal battle, trying to find anyone willing to overlook her scandalous past …

Click here to find out more

The Servant Girl

She is the downstairs maid; he is the Master’s son …

Forced to become a kitchen maid at Fortune Hall, Hetty Pearson strikes up an unlikely friendship with the younger son of the house, Richard.

But Hetty is just a poor servant girl: what hopes does she have of either winning Richard’s heart or escaping his older brother’s more base attentions?

Click here to find out more

A Daughter’s Duty

She’s bound by her duty to her family …

Forced to leave school at the age of fourteen, young Rose Sharpe’s dreams of independence are ruined by her domineering father and constantly ailing mother.

It falls to Rose to bring up her young sister and run the household, with little thanks from either of her parents. But just as Rose has almost given up hope, she realises she has a secret admirer of her own …

Click here to find out more

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Sadie Raine has a bad reputation

When she runs off with a Canadian airman, her two young daughters are left behind to pick up the pieces.

But Cath Raine is determined to rise above the local gossips. Only, when she meets the upper-class Jack on the grounds of his father’s estate, she is tempted by the thought of an affair. Is she destined to follow in her mother’s scandalous footsteps after all?

Click here to find out more

Orphan Girl

She’s no more than an unpaid servant

Lorinda is only a child when tragedy deprives her of her true family and, sent to live with her aunt in her boarding house, she grows up desperately craving affection.

And although she finds friendship – and even love – in the boarding house, she finally sees a chance to escape her drab surroundings and unkind family. But is a marriage of convenience better than a love that’s true?

Click here to find out more

Eliza’s Child

Torn between love and duty

After the birth of their son, Eliza naively hopes her husband Jack will put his gambling habit behind him and become more responsible. But then he loses their home and abandons her, leaving Eliza with no choice but to return to her parents’ house.

She inadvertently attracts the attention of the ruthless mine owner Jonathan Moore. But can she sacrifice her reputation to protect her son?

Click here to find out more

Workhouse Child

All she wants is a family of her own

Lottie is just three years old when her Mammy dies and she is sent to the workhouse. A childhood spent in poverty, skivvying for other people, leaves her with no prospects, no family …

Yet Lottie is bright and has ambitions for a better life. And when an opportunity arises at the local Chapel, Lottie seizes her chance. But will she ever be anything more than a workhouse child?

Click here to find out more

The Miner’s Girl

A terrible choice between her sweetheart and her reputation

Orphaned from birth, Mary Trent has always dreamed of the day she can escape from poverty, and when she meets the dashing young doctor Tom Gallagher, it seems her prayers have been answered.

But an untimely pregnancy spells disaster and the threat of returning to a life of destitution. Is a marriage of convenience the only thing that can save her?

Click here to find out more

An Orphan’s Secret

Life is a long, tough struggle for Meg Maddison

Growing up caring for her brothers after the death of their mother, it is only her indomitable spirit that gets her through the hard times. And when she marries and starts a family of her own, it seems as if the hardships are over.

But the return of a darkly menacing figure from her past threatens to destroy all she has fought for …

Click here to find out more

And don’t miss

A Mother’s Courage

Will her courage be enough to protect her family?

Eleanor Saint spends as much time as she can helping in the community of her small mining town, even though her Grandmother insists work among the poor is not suitable for a young lady. When she comes of age, Eleanor is married to Frances Tait, a missionary, and she is delighted to have a husband who shares her passion for helping others. It is not long before Eleanor becomes a mother and she is so happy to start a family of her own. But when Mr Tait’s work takes their family far from home, her children face dangers that Eleanor could never have imagined. She will need to put her family first, before everything else, if she wants to protect them …

Coming February 2018

Chapter One

Hannah crouched in the kitchen, her younger brother and sister clutched tightly to her.

‘Aah, aah, aah, Nora, Nora – ’

The tortured voice coming from the front room rose higher and higher and Jane and Harry buried their faces in Hannah’s skirts, their hands covering their ears and their bodies racked with sobbing. Hannah stared unseeingly out of the window, desperate to get away from the sound of Da’s pain. But Betty had told her to keep the young ones in the kitchen, ‘out of the way’, she had said. Betty was twelve and she was in the front room with Mam, in case she was needed for anything when the doctor came.

There was another voice in the front room now – the doctor, that was whose voice it was, Hannah realised, and she looked down at the heads in her lap.

‘Whisht now,’ she said softly. ‘Whisht. The doctor’s here, he’ll make Da better, he will, you’ll see.’ But suddenly there was a scream from the front room worse than anything that had gone before and Harry wrenched himself away from Hannah’s grasp and ran to the back door and out of the yard.

‘Harry, Harry!’ she called, releasing Jane and racing after him, and even though he was only four years old and she was ten, she didn’t manage to catch him until he was halfway down the row.

‘Harry! I told you you had to stay with me!’ she cried, pulling him roughly to her and then Jane was there, hanging on to her skirt and shrieking with terror. ‘You left me, you left me!’ Jane cried and she and Harry set up such a bawling they could be heard all along the pit rows.

‘Howay in along of me, hinnies.’

The calm, sympathetic voice caused all three children to look up. It was Mrs Holmes who lived in the end house, the official’s house; she was picking Harry up in her arms and cuddling him into her, not caring that his tears were staining her white pinafore.

‘That’s right, Phoebe, take them in. Just until the ambulance goes, anyroad.’

Hannah looked round and saw that a cluster of women had gathered round them, all clucking in sympathy.

‘Your da will be all right, you’ll see,’ said one. ‘Go on along of Mrs Holmes now, Hannah, take the bairns inside, that’ll be best.’

In the distance there was the clanging of a bell, getting nearer and nearer. Hannah knew what it was: the Union ambulance, coming to take Da. She watched the end of the back alley and sure enough the green-painted ambulance went by, slowing as it turned into the front row.

‘Howay, pet,’ she said to Jane, and, taking the smaller girl’s hand, she followed Mrs Holmes and Harry into the kitchen of the end house.

Mr Holmes was sitting in front of the fire, still black from the pit. The sight of him made Hannah close her eyes tightly but she couldn’t cut out the vivid picture she had of her da, lying on a board on a flat cart as his marras, as miners called their workmates, brought him home from the pit, with Mr Holmes, the shift overman, walking in front of the pony as he tried to pick out a path which avoided any potholes.

‘Now then,’ said Mrs Holmes, ‘sit ye down. I’d wager you haven’t had your dinners yet, have you? Now I have a nice pan of broth on the bar keeping hot, you shall have a bowlful each.’

The children looked at her with round eyes, even Hannah. The broth smelled really meaty and they hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. Harry’s stomach rumbled; he glanced up at Hannah anxiously and Mrs Holmes noticed it.

‘Howay, Harry, your mam won’t mind you having something to eat in our house,’ she encouraged him. ‘I’ll put a cushion on this chair so you can reach the table comfortably. Now, lasses, sit on the form at that side. Don’t worry, I tell you, your mam won’t mind. And after, I’ll give you a can of broth to take home for the others. That’ll help your mam out, like.’

The children sat round the table, Harry balanced on a fat, round cushion filched from Mr Holmes’s chair, and soon they were tucking into bowls of Mrs Holmes’s broth. At least, Harry and Jane were tucking in; Hannah’s throat had closed in, she found she couldn’t swallow after the first mouthful. She stared at the yellow globules of fat floating on the top but she wasn’t really seeing them. Instead she was listening for the ambulance bell starting up again, taking Da away.

‘It looks badly,’ Mr Holmes said quietly to his wife but not so quietly that Hannah’s sharp ears didn’t hear. ‘Poor lad’s back’s broke, I doubt.’

‘A fall of stone, was it?’ asked Mrs Holmes.

‘Aye. The deputy had fired the shot all right, none could fault him; he’d got the men back out of the road first and the coalface came down. It was after the black dust thinned and settled and the men were returning to the face that it happened. Jake was the first back. He was always the first, always eager to get back to work. You know the name he had for hard work. Well, the shot must have disturbed a fault in the roof, loosened the stone, for suddenly there was a rumble and the men jumped back, away from the danger, they all knew what it meant, but Jake was caught when the stone came down. There wasn’t a lot, the others soon got it off him, but the damage was done.’

Hannah stared at her broth, feeling sick. She looked up at the wooden beams of the kitchen ceiling, imagining them falling on her and Jane and Harry, and shuddered. Suddenly, she knew she was definitely going to be sick and she mumbled something to Mrs Holmes, and rushed out to the drain in the yard and retched and retched.

Mrs Holmes glanced at her husband, biting her lip. ‘There, now, we shouldn’t have said anything in front of the bairns,’ she said. ‘That Hannah’s a sensitive lass.’

Jane and Harry had stopped eating and were gazing through the window at their sister who was crouched over the drain.

‘Don’t worry, now, she’ll be all right,’ Mrs Holmes reassured them. ‘I’ll fetch her back, poor lass.’

Hannah’s eyes were watering and she was trembling violently when Mrs Holmes took hold of her shoulders and drew her back to the kitchen door.

‘Howay, lass,’ Mrs Holmes said, ‘it’s the shock, that’s what. You have to be strong now, you big ones, for the sake of little Jane and Harry.’ She offered Hannah a large handkerchief, a real one, not a piece of rag, which was what the Armstrong children usually used for a hanky, and Hannah wiped her face. They paused in the doorway as they heard a motor starting up, followed by the loud clanging of the bell on top of the union ambulance and Hannah’s trembling increased until she was shaking uncontrollably.

‘They’ll be taking him to the County Hospital,’ said Mr Holmes. ‘Eeh, lass, you’re shivering, come away in by the fire and have a warm.’

‘Thank you, Mr Holmes,’ Hannah said, surprising herself at how normal her voice sounded, ‘but we’ll have to get back. Betty said we had to stay in the kitchen, she’ll be mad if she can’t find us.’

‘All right, lass, if you want to,’ said Mrs Holmes. ‘Wait on a minute, though, I’ll give you that broth. It’ll likely do for your mam and Alfred.’

Hannah stood quietly, with Jane and Harry hanging on to her skirt, as Mrs Holmes went into the pantry and brought out a large tin can with a lid in the form of a cup. Picking up the pan, she filled the can with what was left of the broth.

‘Poor bairns,’ Mrs Holmes said to her husband as she watched the children go down the yard and out into the back lane. ‘Whatever’s going to happen to them now?’

‘Jake’ll get compensation,’ said Mr Holmes.

‘Hmm!’ His wife’s expression showed plainly what she thought of the compensation rates for hewers who were injured in the mine.

‘Where’ve you been?’ demanded Betty as the children trooped into the kitchen of the Armstrong house. ‘Mam’s gone in the ambulance with me da and I have to get some dinner ready for Alf when he comes in from work. An’ you let the fire get down, it’ll be ages before it’s hot enough to cook anything.’

Betty had one of her mother’s aprons tied round her thin twelve-year-old body and drooping almost to her ankles. She was a tall girl, with fair hair and brown eyes, now red and strained-looking.

‘Mrs Holmes took us in her house,’ volunteered Jane. ‘She gave us some grand broth, Betty, we’ve brought you some an’ all.’

‘You shouldn’t take food off folk!’ snapped Betty. ‘You know Mam says we haven’t to.’

Jane looked crestfallen and Hannah put the can of steaming broth on the table. ‘Mrs Holmes said Mam wouldn’t mind, not when we’ve trouble in the house,’ she said. ‘Didn’t we take some to Mrs Gittens when Mr Gittens was hurt in the pit? Anyroad, it’ll do nicely for Alf’s dinner. Mam just made the bread this morning, it’ll be grand and fresh for him with the broth.’

Betty looked undecided, she was very conscious of the fact that she was in charge of the household, if only temporarily, but she glanced at the smouldering fire and back at the can of broth on the table and made up her mind.

‘Don’t leave it on the table to get cold, our Hannah,’ she said. ‘Get the pan from the pantry and put it on the bar to keep warm. Alf won’t eat it if it’s cold, will he?’

Hannah rushed to do Betty’s bidding.

It seemed to Hannah in the next few weeks that she was always rushing to do Betty’s bidding. The moment she came in from school, even as she walked down the yard, Betty was issuing her instructions. ‘Fetch a bucket of coal in’, ‘Peel the taties’, ‘Go to the shop’ – even little Jane had to do her share. For Mam was busy with Da, who had been sent home from the hospital in a boxlike bed on wheels, unable to sit up or move his body from the chest down. He lived in the front room now and it was Alf who came in black from his work on the screens where he cleaned the coal of stone. Alf sat in Da’s chair by the fire though he was only fourteen years old, and waited for Hannah to fill the tin bath with hot water from the boiler by the fire and demanded his dinner on time. For Alf was the only one bringing in a wage now, even if it was only four shillings a week.

‘Seventeen and tuppence,’ said Mam the first time Alf brought home Da’s weekly compensation. ‘It’ll be fourteen and ninepence when they take off the war money an’ they’ll be doing that, sure as shot, now the war’s over and done with. An’ we can’t live on that, there’s only one thing for it, we need another wage coming in.’

‘Mam! I can’t go to work, I’m not thirteen yet,’ said Betty, suddenly looking very young and vulnerable.

‘Not you, pet,’ answered her mother. ‘Our Robert’ll have to come home.’

Hannah sat beside Jane and Harry on the horsehair sofa and all three gazed at Mam. What was she talking about? thought Hannah. Robert wouldn’t want to come home, he didn’t like it in Winton. Why, the last time he’d come he’d told her that he was going to work on the carriers with his uncle Billy when he left school. Robert lived with Grandma Armstrong, miles away in Consett; they hadn’t even seen him for almost a year.

‘Robert’s only thirteen, Mam,’ said Betty.

‘Aye. Well, he can take the leaving exam like Alf did. If he knows his letters and his figuring, the gaffer will take him on, he’s sure to when his father broke his back in the pit. You and Alf will have to look to your da on Saturday, Betty, while I go to Consett and tell your grandma. Best not put it in a letter. I’ll away up to see the manager now, see about getting him a job.’

Nora Armstrong looked the three younger children over critically.

‘Hannah, wash Harry’s face, you three are coming along of me. It won’t hurt to show the manager I’ve got bairns to feed an’ all,’ she said as she looked in the mahogany-framed mirror which hung over the high mantelpiece. She smoothed her dark hair away from her forehead, then, satisfied with her appearance, went to the middle door which led into the front room.

‘I’m going up to the colliery office, Jake,’ she said. ‘You’ll be all right for a while, will you?’

‘Aye, I’m fine. I’m enjoying the rest, lying here,’ came the sardonic reply.

‘I’ll only be half an hour,’ Nora said. ‘I’m taking the little ones; Betty will be here, though, if you want her.’

‘Well, get away, woman, if you’re going,’ Jake answered irritably.

Nora took her shawl from the hook on the back door and wrapped it round her.

‘Are you not going to wear your Sunday coat?’ asked Betty, sounding surprised.

‘No. It’s better not to let them think I’m well off, a shawl’s the best thing,’ said Nora.

They walked up the row, Nora holding Harry’s hand and Hannah behind with Jane. The children were quiet; even Hannah was nervous of meeting the colliery manager, while Jane and Harry looked white and strained. It wasn’t far to the pit yard and the colliery office was just inside the gates, a red brick building with steps leading up to the entrance. Parked beside the steps was a motorcar and sitting in the passenger seat was a boy of about fifteen, a boy in a suit with a Norfolk jacket and a proper collar and tie and his dark hair slicked back over his ears.

‘Look, Hannah, a motorcar,’ cried Harry, grinning with delight. ‘By; isn’t it grand? What does it say, Hannah? Those letters on the front, I mean.’ Harry was fairly dancing round the car; he touched the gleaming coachwork and the bright silver of the headlights. ‘When I grow up I’m going to have a motorcar just like this,’ he declared.

‘Sunbeam, that’s what it says,’ said Hannah. She was almost as entranced by the machine as Harry was.

‘Sunbeam coupé,’ said the boy and he climbed out of the car. All three children quietened and Harry drew close to his mother.

‘He talks funny,’ Harry said in a whisper which nevertheless was heard by them all. The boy smiled.

‘Would you like to sit in my seat for a minute?’ he asked Harry.

‘Eeh, no,’ said Mrs Armstrong, pulling the child to her.

‘Mam!’ said Harry, his eyes bright with hope, and she gave in.

‘All right, but just for a minute. We have to see the manager before he goes home,’ she decreed.

‘Oh, my father’s with him now, he won’t be going home yet,’ said the boy. He held the door open for Harry, who clambered on to the padded leather seat and sat quietly, gazing at the dashboard with its knobs and dials, happiness oozing out of him.

The boy looked down at Hannah, smiling, and she smiled back shyly. By, he was a grand lad, she thought, letting Harry have a go in his car. She reckoned he was about the same age as Alf, but he was so tall and good-looking and his clothes were so clean. Even his hands were clean, she saw, there were no scars or black bits under the skin, his hands were soft and white. He didn’t work on the screens, she decided. He had kind eyes, though. Was he a prince? A prince like in Cinderella?

Hannah looked up, startled, as the office window opened and a man stuck his head out.

‘Timothy! Get that boy out of there at once. At once, do you hear? God knows what dirt and disease he might be carrying, not to mention fleas. I told you to sit in the car until I was ready, did I not, sir?’

‘Come on, Harry, we have to go in now,’ said Nora. She had turned a fiery red and kept her head bent as she lifted Harry out of the car. Hannah was mortified, she burned with the shame of it. Her family didn’t have fleas, nor nits either. Everybody in the rows knew Mam was spitting clean – why, didn’t she rake their heads every night with the small-tooth comb? Just in case they picked anything up at school, that was.

‘We haven’t got fleas, Mam, have we not?’ she said as Jane and Harry began to whimper.

‘No, we have not!’ snapped Nora. ‘We’re as clean as anybody, we are.’

Hannah stoke a glance at the boy, who was sheepishly climbing into the car.

‘Dust the seat before you sit down, Timothy,’ roared the man at the window.

‘Yes, Father,’ the boy mumbled. He took a blue duster from the tray under the dashboard and rubbed it over the seat.

‘There’ll be no dirt on it,’ hissed Hannah and Timothy looked at her, his eyes shamed.

‘Howay, Hannah,’ snapped her mother and Hannah followed her up the steps and into the office.

There was a desk just inside with a clerk sitting behind it. Through the partition window behind him, Hannah could see the man, Timothy’s father, talking to the manager.

‘Yes, what do you want?’ demanded the clerk. ‘It’s almost closing time, you’ve left it a bit late, whatever it is.’

‘I’m Mrs Armstrong,’ said Nora, holding her head high. Two bright spots of colour still burned in her cheeks. ‘I’ve come to see the manager.’

‘Oh, yes, it was your man who was hurt by that last fall of stone, wasn’t it? Well, you can’t see the manager now, he has Lord Akers’s agent, Mr Durkin, with him. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.’

The clerk gave a dismissive nod and shuffled the papers together on his desk, but Nora was not about to go.

‘I’ll wait until I can see him,’ she insisted, her voice rising. ‘Surely he’ll see me, when my Jake’s had his back broke in the pit?’ The incident with Harry and the car had filled her with resentment, stiffening her resolve.

‘My good woman – ’ the clerk began, but he was interrupted by the manager, who opened the door to the inner office and poked his head out.

‘What’s the commotion, Robinson?’ he asked testily.

‘It’s Mrs Armstrong, sir, the wife of the hewer who was injured in that last roof fall. I told her you were busy.’

‘Get her to come in, Hudson, I might as well hear what she has to say while I’m here,’ a voice called from behind the manager. Harry shrank into Hannah’s skirt, whimpering once more.

Hannah patted his head. ‘It’s all right, Harry,’ she whispered.

‘Yes, of course, Mr Durkin,’ said the manager and held the door open for Nora and her children.

They stood before the desk, Nora, Hannah and the two little ones between them. They were not offered seats though there were a couple of chairs by the wall besides the comfortable armchair occupied by Timothy’s father.

Hannah gazed at him in awe. It was bad enough having to come to see the manager, but Mr Durkin was like no one she had ever seen before. She looked at the smooth black cloth of his suit, his highly polished shoes and white spats. He held a shiny walking stick with a silver top in one hand and was tapping it idly against one leg of his chair. He was tall and elegant and his shirt collar was snowy white against the pale skin of his neck. She watched him as he looked the children over, his face expressionless.

‘Well, what is it, Mrs Armstrong?’ asked Mr Hudson, who had returned to his chair behind the desk.

‘Well … ’

Nora was suddenly tongue-tied.

‘Come along now, Mrs Armstrong, we haven’t got all day,’ Mr Hudson said briskly.

‘She’s been getting weekly compensation, hasn’t she, Mr Hudson?’ Mr Durkin put in.

‘Yes, sir, seventeen shillings and twopence,’ answered the manager.

‘Well, then, that’s all right.’

‘I was wanting to ask you if you’ll set our Robert on, on the screens, I mean,’ Nora said, finding her tongue at last.

‘Robert? Is that your son? We already have one son of yours working on the screens, haven’t we?’

‘Yes, sir. Alf. But Robert’s turned thirteen and he’ll sit the test to leave school. We need the money, sir, seventeen shillings doesn’t keep a family, sir.’

Mr Durkin stopped playing with his stick and stared at her, frowning. ‘What do you mean, it’s not enough? I’d have you know, it’s all you’re going to get. The trouble with you people is you don’t know how to handle money correctly. Remember, the Compensation Committee haven’t decided on your husband’s case yet. There’s some question as to whether it was his own fault, and if that is the decision they come to, you are not entitled to anything. We are paying you now and we don’t have to, you know. And we’re allowing you to stay in the colliery house when we could put another workman in.’

Nora gasped. Her face whitened and she leaned forwards, putting her hands on the desk to prop herself up. She closed her eyes for a moment.

‘Are you feeling faint, Mrs Armstrong?’ Mr Hudson got to his feet hurriedly and brought Nora a chair. ‘Would you like a glass of water?’ He poured some water into a glass from the carafe on the desk and offered it to her and she took a sip.

The agent watched the little drama curiously but with little obvious concern. When Nora sat back, the colour returning to her cheeks, he spoke again.

‘Come now, Mrs Armstrong, I only said the committee hasn’t decided yet. There’s no need to take on.’

‘I don’t know what we’ll do without compensation,’ said Nora. ‘We can’t hardly manage as it is.’

‘I did not say there would be no compensation, I simply said we as a company may not be liable. But Lord Akers is a benevolent employer, I think you’ll find. Now, come, we have work to do here. I think we have allowed you enough time.’

Nora got to her feet, looking and feeling defeated. Hannah looked up into her mother’s face and saw the misery there; then she looked at Mr Durkin and she hated him. She hated the way he talked to her mother and most of all she hated the way he spoke, fancy like but frightening, like the wicked man in the pantomime she’d seen at chapel last Christmas. She took hold of her mother’s hand and squeezed it in an effort to comfort her as they turned for the door.

They were in the outer office, almost outside altogether when Mr Hudson followed them and spoke to the clerk.

‘Robert Armstrong. Put his name down to start on the screens next week,’ he said. Without looking at Nora, he turned on his heel and went back into his office.

Chapter Two

Hannah was playing house in the yard with Jane when Robert came home. The two girls had their mother’s wooden clothes horse open in a V and an old blanket thrown over it to make a tent. Inside the tent was an old clippie mat and Harry lying down on it pretending to be a baby. Harry didn’t want to be the baby, he wanted to be the father, but he gave in when the girls insisted.

All three children abandoned the game and scrambled out of the tent when they heard their mother’s voice at the gate.

‘Now then, Robert,’ Nora was saying, ‘you’re a big lad now, it’s time you went out to work. Anyroad, we need the money so that’s the end of that. Now stop making a fuss, there’s a good lad.’

‘Gran calls me Bob,’ muttered Robert, ‘and so does Uncle Billy.’

Hannah stood in a row with Harry and Jane, watching her mother and Robert curiously.

‘Righto, then, we’ll call you Bob if that’s what you want,’ said Nora as she led the way up the yard. ‘Now, come and say hallo to your sisters and brother.’

Three pairs of dark eyes looked solemnly at Bob as he stood awkwardly before them. He was a tall, ungainly boy with the same shock of dark hair as they all had. It was almost two years since they had last seen him, and only Hannah had any remembrance of him at all. The little ones were shy of him and huddled in Hannah’s skirts.

‘Hallo,’ said Bob, looking down at the brick-paved yard. He scuffed the hobnails of one boot back and forth over the bricks.

Hannah suddenly felt sorry for Bob. His face was flushed and his eyes full of unshed tears. She smiled at him, while Jane and Harry hung their heads, overcome with shyness.

‘Clear that mess up, our Hannah, and mind, don’t forget to fold that blanket up properly and put it away. Right then, Bob, let’s away in. Betty will have the tea ready,’ Nora said briskly. She went inside, followed after a second or two by Bob and the two younger children. Hannah was left to dismantle the tent.

The family were already sitting round the table when she got in after putting the clothes horse back in the wash house in the yard.

‘You bide with me, our Bob,’ Alf was saying in his ‘big brother’ voice which Hannah knew so well and resented almost as much. ‘You’ll get on all right on the screens tomorrow if you do what I say.’

Bob looked down at the meat-paste sandwich on his plate. Hannah could see that his fists were clenched so hard the knuckles were white. She took a bite out of her own sandwich and chewed it carefully. He looks so unhappy, she thought.

‘Did you not want to come back home to live, Bob?’ she asked. ‘It’s nice here, you know, there’s the bunny banks and sometimes there’s the magic lantern at chapel. And – ’ Hannah meant to make Bob feel at home and tell him of all the nice things about Winton. But all she did was to cause his pent-up feelings to burst out. He stood up from the table and glared at her so hard she dropped her sandwich.

‘This isn’t my home!’ he shouted. ‘I live at Consett, that’s my home, with Gran and Uncle Billy. I’m going back an’ all, I’m going back to school and then I’m going to help Uncle Billy in his carrier business, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m not going down the pit, I’m not. I don’t care about your stupid bunny banks – what sort of a name is that for a rabbit warren, anyway?’

‘Robert! Sit down!’

The roar came from the open door of the front room where Da was lying in his box bed. All the children gazed at him in shock. It was the first time they had heard Da shout since the accident. Robert subsided into his seat and there was a moment’s silence.

‘Bob,’ Nora said. ‘Bob, you have to stay here, pet. I know you love your gran, but you’re needed here.’

‘I don’t care,’ answered Bob, though this time he kept his voice low. ‘I’m going back. You didn’t want me when I was little, why should I come back now? Gran’s been my mam.’

Hannah stared at him, wide-eyed. She tried to imagine what it would be like if she had to go and live in another place and go out to work doing something she didn’t want to do, but it was hard to imagine such a thing.

‘Bob, Bob, it wasn’t like that. We did want you, son, but Betty came along and you were nought but a babby yourself. Times were bad, pet, your father was on short time. Your gran could look after you and feed you better, your grandda was an overman and they only had Billy left at home. Try to understand, Bob, there’s a good lad.’

Hannah watched her mother as she talked. Mam looked as distressed as Bob was himself. A lump formed in Hannah’s own throat. She looked down at the sandwich on her plate; suddenly she didn’t feel hungry any more and the sandwich looked enormous. If she didn’t eat it now, she would get it for her supper, she knew that well enough.

She’d been looking forward to seeing Bob again. It had not occurred to her that he wouldn’t want to come. Everything had changed since Da hurt his back in the pit, she thought. If only they could go back to the way it was before.

It was Christmas before Jake’s claim for permanent disability compensation was allowed by the committee. Hannah came running in from school on the day before the Christmas holiday, clutching the green paper Christmas tree she had cut out in class together with a multicoloured paper chain and a hat made out of newspaper.

‘Look, Mam, look,’ she said, ‘we made them in school. Can we put them on the wall?’ She was excited and didn’t at first notice that Mam was smiling for the first time in months and Da’s ‘chariot’, as he had begun to call his wheeled bed, had been brought out of the front room and was by the settee.

‘Why, they’re grand, pet,’ declared Mam. ‘We’ll hang the paper chain round the mirror, what do you think, Jake? And the tree, why, it’s almost like a real one, isn’t it? We’ll stick it on the wall, eh?’

‘Aye,’ said Da. Hannah looked at him, he too was smiling.

Forgetting about the paper tree and the chain for a minute, Hannah looked from one to the other. Her mother was relaxed and happy-looking, and so was Da. For a minute she had a wild hope that Da was going to get better and everything would soon be back to normal.

‘Are you a bit better, Da?’ she asked anxiously, fearful of his answer.

‘A bit, pet, a bit,’ he said. ‘All the better for getting my compensation through, I am.’

Hannah smiled. The tiny hope that her father was going to get back to his normal health died, but the money made her mother and father happy and that was good. The atmosphere in the house had changed and she responded to it eagerly. ‘Can Bob go back to Consett now?’ she asked and her mother’s smile faded. ‘No, no, pet, he’ll have to stay here and work. He’ll be all right, you’ll see, he’ll get used to it. All the lads have to go to work.’ She looked down at Jake and bit her lip. Bob wasn’t settling down as they had hoped; he still hankered after going back to live in Consett.

Hannah felt a twinge of sadness for Bob but it was soon forgotten in the excitement of decorating the kitchen for Christmas. Jane had a paper chain from school too, and there was some holly which Alf had garnered from the hedge by the bunny banks and with bits stuck on the frame of Jake and Nora’s wedding picture which hung on one wall, and the red paper bell which came out every year hanging from the gas light, the kitchen soon began to look quite festive.

Hannah had made a star from silver paper culled from Da’s cigarette packet, and was pinning it to the top of the paper Christmas tree when Robert and Alf came in from work.

‘Hurry up, Hannah, and get the bath in for the lads,’ said Betty. ‘I’m busy tonight.’ She had been ironing a great pile of clothes on the table and now she rushed to get the ironing out of the way so that the table could be laid for the meal.

Obediently, Hannah went out into the yard and reached up to take the bath down from where it hung on a nail.

‘Do you see my Christmas tree, Bob?’ she asked brightly as she lugged the bath in and put it down before the fire. She smiled as she ladled hot water out of the boiler into the bath ready for Alf, who always insisted on being the first to wash as he was the oldest. She was thinking the Christmas tree was just the thing to cheer Bob up, he was always so glum.

Bob looked at the cut-out tree stuck on the wall with its star slightly lopsided on the top of it.

‘Uncle Billy bought a real one from the market last year,’ he said. ‘That’s just a bit of paper.’

Hannah was crestfallen. Suddenly the tree didn’t seem quite so festive as she had thought it did.

‘Eeh, a real tree?’ Harry asked Bob, round-eyed. ‘A big one, like at the Sunday school party?’

‘Of course, a real tree,’ snapped Bob, ‘a big one an’ all.’

Harry was snubbed; the light faded from his eyes and he looked down at his boots. He was still a little in awe of his new-found brother and easily put down by him.

‘Bob, what’s the matter with your face?’ Da asked all of a sudden, and everyone turned to look at Bob.

‘Nothing,’ said Bob.

‘Oh!’ cried Hannah, distressed, ‘you’ve hurt your eye, I didn’t see it at first.’ Bob’s left eye was swollen and bruised purple and there was a small cut and a streak of dried blood along the cheekbone underneath.

‘Who did that to you, Bob?’ asked Mam quietly. She had come out of the pantry carrying a tureen for the potatoes which were simmering on the bar. Putting the dish down on the table, she put her finger under Bob’s chin and lifted it so that she could look at the bruise in the gas light. Even though his face was covered in black smears from the coal dust, the black eye was becoming more obvious all the time.

‘Nobody,’ said Bob, twisting his face away.

‘It was Ralph Cornish, Mam,’ said Alf. Alf was already kneeling before the tin bath, stripped to the waist and lathering himself with a bar of carbolic soap.

‘Ralph Cornish? But he’s a full-grown man!’ exclaimed Mam. ‘Whatever did he do that for?’

‘He said our Bob was cheeky,’ said Alf. He bent over the bath and dipped his head under the water, rinsing off the lather before reaching for the towel which Hannah was automatically holding out to him.

‘An’ were you, Bob?’ Mam asked quietly.

There was a low growl from Jake. ‘If he was, do you think that gives a ruffian like Ralph Cornish the right to hit a bit lad like Bob? What are you thinking about, woman?’

‘I didn’t say anything, Mother,’ said Bob. He was the only one to call Nora Mother. ‘We were just coming out of the pit-yard gate and he pushed me out of the way and I asked him who he thought he was pushing, that’s all.’

‘I told you to keep out of his way,’ said Alf. ‘He takes after his da, that one, they’re both of them bullies.’

Jake swore. ‘By God,’ he said, ‘if I only had the use of my legs I’d go up there now and show him what for. Like his da, do you say? He hasn’t got a da, that one, or if he has, nobody knows who it is. Wesley Cornish took up with his mother when Ralph was a bairn. Aye, and left his own wife and bairns to God and Providence an’ all, he did. That Ralph’s a bas –’

‘Jake!’ Nora cut him off sharply. ‘The children are listening. Don’t use bad language in my house.’

Hannah and Jane were indeed listening, wide-eyed. Their father’s head was moving restlessly from side to side in agitation on the pillow of the ‘chariot’. Harry got under the table and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

Hannah’s brow creased in puzzlement. What did Da mean, Ralph Cornish hadn’t got a da? She couldn’t understand that at all.

‘Why, man, it’s enough to make a saint swear,’ said Jake, but his voice was quieter though still bitter. Nora shook her head at him and turned back to Bob.

‘Let’s get that face washed, lad,’ she said. ‘Betty, come on, we’ll empty the bath and fill it with some fresh water.’

‘It’s cold water that eye needs,’ counselled Jake. Before his accident he had started a first-aid course as part of his training to become a deputy. An ambition which was lost now, ‘like snow on the oven top’, as Nora had commented sadly.

‘You’ll have to wash up the dishes tonight, Hannah,’ said Betty. ‘I’ve got enough to do with the mending and darning.’

‘But we have to go to the choir practice, it’s the last one before the carol singing,’ said Hannah, dismayed. Hannah loved the chapel choir. She had a fine voice, pure and strong for her age and already showing signs of deepening to mezzo-soprano.

‘If you hurry you can still go, it’s not until six o’clock, is it? I can see to your da after that,’ said her mother, and Hannah relaxed.

‘We’re going carol singing all round the village on Sunday night,’ she announced happily. ‘Mr Hodgson says we’re even going up to the manager’s house, even to Mr Durkin’s house an’ all. We’re taking the little harmonium too, if it doesn’t snow, like.’ She was torn between wanting it to snow for Christmas and wanting to sing with the accompaniment of the harmonium.

Nora’s face hardened at the mention of Mr Durkin. She had not forgotten the humiliation she had had to endure from him at the colliery office.

‘You’ll not get much out of the agent,’ she observed tartly. ‘And his house is a mile and a half away from the village an’ all, it’ll be a long way to walk for nowt. Still, I dare say Mr Hodgson reckons he knows best, he’s the choirmaster, after all.’

The snow came during the night, but left only a thin covering, which crisped into ice crystals soon after it fell. There was a little more on Sunday morning, as the children sat in Sunday school, and Mr Hodgson, who was a Sunday school superintendent as well as choirmaster, had a harder time than usual keeping order. The children were excited to see the soft flakes falling past the high windows. They sang ‘In the Deep Mid-Winter’, and Hannah threw herself into it heart and soul, imagining to herself the Baby in a cold, draughty stable with snow falling outside just as it was falling in Winton now.

By the time the Sunday school was out, the snow had stopped and a strong, freezing wind was blowing down on them from the fells to the west.

‘I’m cold,’ whined Harry. Hannah tied his muffler in a cross over his chest and fastened it at the back.

‘We’ll have a race home,’ she said. She and Harry went whooping along the row and into the house, with Jane trailing behind them looking white and cold.

‘Does Father Christmas come tonight?’ Harry asked his mother as he’d asked her every day for a week.

‘Only to good boys and girls,’ said Nora.

‘Father Christmas!’ said Bob scornfully, but his mother quelled him with a look.

At seven o’clock, the choir assembled outside the chapel. Hannah stamped her boots on the frozen ground and tucked her chin in her mother’s shawl which was tied over her coat, but she was so excited she didn’t really feel the cold. This was the first year she had been allowed to sing with the grown-up choir, not just with the Sunday school singers, and she held her candle carefully even though it was not yet lit, not here under the street lights lit by gas from the colliery. The candle was for when they walked out to the manager’s house in Old Winton and then on up to Durham Road, where Lord Akers’s agent, Mr Durkin, lived.

‘You stick close to me, mind,’ Betty admonished. ‘I don’t want you dancing off on your own like you do.’

Betty was more bossy every day, Hannah reflected as she moved her fingers about inside her mitts in an attempt to warm them up. The mitts were really a pair of Da’s socks but they were nice and warm, each sock folded over on itself to make a double layer of wool. There was a burst of male laughter and she looked over to where Alf was standing with a group of men and boys. He was holding his hand in a funny way, she thought; staring hard, she saw the tiny red glow and realised he was holding a cigarette, turned back into his cupped hand to hide it. Quickly, she moved to stand between him and Betty. If Betty saw Alf smoking she would be sure to tell Da.

When Mr Hodgson came out with Laurie, his son, who was the organ player, they were carrying the tiny harmonium between them. At last the singers were off.

‘By, it’s grand, isn’t it, Betty?’ Hannah cried as they trudged away from the rows of miners’ cottages to the village. They had sung two carols at each end of each row. Alf and his friends had rattled their collecting boxes labelled ‘METHODIST MISSION TO THE POOR’ and almost every household in the rows had contributed a penny; Mr Holmes had put in sixpence. Hannah crunched the thin, icy layer of snow beneath her boots, fairly dancing along as she wondered what it would be like to be ‘the Poor’ and not have any money at all, not even the compensation, nor a house to live in. She gazed up at the clear starry sky and wondered which one was the Star of Bethlehem.

‘It’ll be grand when we get back home,’ said Betty dourly. Hannah’s excitement dimmed a little, but only for a minute. They had just reached old Winton and Mr Hodgson halted before the Black Boy. The choir gathered round the harmonium under the swinging sign with its picture of a little pit lad with a candle in his hat.

‘Once in Royal David’s City’ rang through the air and men tumbled out of the inn, some with tankards of beer in their hands. Hannah knew a lot of them, for they were neighbours and friends of her father’s. There were some disapproving looks among the choir but the collecting boxes were satisfactorily heavier by the time Alf and his friends had done the rounds of the drinkers and she was glad for the sake of the Poor.